Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's already

Monday the 30th of October, which means that the clocks have gone back. It gets light nicely early,

but it gets dark ridiculously early, except actually where I'm heading right now

as you might be able to hear I'm on a form of transport this one is a ferry it's the

Sea Dreams King of Rhodes ferry and it is sailing from the island of Rhodes, Rhodes Town itself, across to Marmaris.

I can just see through the morning haze the coast of Turkey coming into focus.

And this is a good opportunity I think to say that, well first of all the clocks haven't gone back in Turkey, so I'm going

to have to adjust my watch once I arrive, but also to remind people of the huge opportunities,

at least in summer, to combine Turkey and the eastern Greek islands.

The huge advantage of a trip to somewhere like roads or costs is that you can then very easily

access the lovely Turkish mainland.

I have a two-centre holiday and it's a really easy and straightforward journey.

This ferry is actually pretty much packed, but almost all of those people, I would say, are day-trippers.

I got to the port as appointed an hour before departure and was quite surprised to find

about 20 minutes before departure. A whole lot of coaches turning up with people who are just

taking a day trip, judging by their arm bands, wristbands from lovely all-inclusive results in roads and it's a good day out for them

but it's also a chance for me to explore Turkey more widely and from Marmaris which itself

I like it's a pretty old port on a lovely bay, really an interesting old time.

I'll then be travelling deeper into Turkey, eventually ending up close to the city of Bodrum,

where the Abta Travel Convention, 202323 is taking place.

But there's other opportunities as well, of which Bodrum to cause is probably the easiest

and most frequent.

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